Richard Barker wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I started to reply to a number of personal mail as best I could, but I
> didn't realise what affect my comments would make.
>
> Mathew wrote: (my name has two "t"'s please)
>
<...snip...>
> Unfortunately Mathew then says:
>
> "If America had not entered
> World War II and come to the rescue of Europe from Fascism and Nazism,
> he and his family would be either speaking German with a Nazi accent or
> have gone up in smoke long ago."
>
Richard Barker wrote:
> This is what offends people; American had no interest in entering the War,
> even though Europe was being bombed and invaded and the Jewish people were
> being victimised.  It only when the 'Japs' attacked the US, did anything
> happen. Again this has parallels with 9/11.

Obviously you need another history lesson. Perhaps you've never heard of
the "Lend Lease" program under Roosevelt that in the end GAVE billions
of dollars worth of war goods, ships, food, etc. to England and other
countries - virtually all of which was never paid back. Roosevelt
committed the US to aiding Great Britain in 1940, but under existing
laws Britain had to pay for purchases - the interim debt was carried by
the US taxpayer - a form of short term loan. The "Lend Lease" act was
initially passed by Congress in March 1941, with a supplemental bill of
$5.98Billion on October 23, 1941. "Lend Lease" initially was intended to
help Great Britain, but within months expanded to include China, the
Soviet Union and by the end of the war more than 40 nations at a cost of
$49.1Billion (of which only one nation repaid their war debt, and this
was neither Great Britain nor Belgium). The American government was
trying to do what it could while staying within the bounds of official
neutrality. The amounts cited speak nothing of the millions of dollars
given by private individuals for provision of food stuffs and clothing
through the Red Cross and other aid agencies, privately to individuals
in Europe to literally buy the freedom of Jews in German occupied areas,
etc. My grandmother's house was two blocks from train tracks that prior
to the war had seen thousands of gondola cars of scrap iron headed to
Japan to build their economy, only to be sent back to us as ships,
planes and bullets as instruments of war. My great-aunt headed a group
of women that sewed clothing for war refugees and soldiers alike,
starting in September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland. There were
thousands of such groups all across the US. You also seem to forget the
Marshall Plan that rebuilt the European and Japanese economies. Since
you complain (typically) of what offends people, let me state that
generally what offends Americans is the massive amount of assistance
provided hundreds of countries world-wide, and what we get back in
return is scorn - certainly not thanks.

I would suggest you spend some time reading material available through
the Library of Congress' web site:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/homepage/lchp.html - or a simple search in yahoo
using "Lend Lease" will return the relevant information.

>
> I'd like to think that for once the good beat the bad.  The US, Russia,
> Britain, etc, got together and, for once, clearly overthrew evil.
>
You have to "think" about it? You don't know?

> Another way to look at your remark is, maybe you'd be speaking Japanese or
> German without Europe and Russia.
<...snip...>
And here you demonstrate your total lack of understanding of the
American spirit. Freedom, Mr. Barker, is what Americans value - possibly
freedom you've never experienced and therefore cannot understand. The US
population in 1940 was 131,669,275 - Japan's 73,114,300. Even if Japan
had been able to kill Americans one-for-one, there'd still have been
58,554,975 Americans left after the carnage. Read Tom Brokaw's book "The
Greatest Generation" to get an understanding that yes, Americans would
have fought to the last man, woman and child to retain our freedom, as
we will today. As for speaking Russian, Roosevelt/Truman probably would
have just nuked 'em and called it a good day.

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